


it's a different kind of danger (pull the pillars down)

by extasiswings



Series: Storms & Saints [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Antonia Stark - Freeform, Bisexual Female Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression (implied), F/M, Polyamory Negotiations, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 20:12:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4679837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve goes into the ice with Peggy’s voice in his ear and Bucky’s face flickering behind his eyelids and he doesn’t want to die.</p><p>He wakes up and he does.</p><p>He never expects to find something new to live for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's a different kind of danger (pull the pillars down)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shuofthewind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/gifts).



> So, I told myself the last part I posted was going to be the last part for a while...and then Steve got to me. 
> 
> Happy Reading.

Steve goes into the ice with Peggy’s voice in his ear and Bucky’s face flickering behind his eyelids and he doesn’t want to die but he also thinks it might not be the worst thing in the world.

Waking up is the last thing he expects to happen.

_(—people tell him he’s lucky, go off on tangents about the serum that he tunes out, but he doesn’t feel lucky because he’s missed everything and Peggy is the only one left and he can’t even bring himself to see her because he’s raw and beaten and he can’t breathe, can’t think, because this wasn’t supposed to happen—)_

Steve finds out about Antonia Stark by accident. Fury monitors the news he has access to, but he can’t be everywhere all the time, and in the end it’s just happenstance, a lab tech talking about the Stark heir going missing in the hall outside his room, and suddenly he has a purpose again.

_(—at first he want to scream, because he’s missed so much, so much, and he doesn’t know this woman at all beyond the fact that she’s Howard’s daughter, but he wants to know her, has to, and it’s not fair to think that he might not get the chance—)_

Fury tries to talk him out of it, citing rules and regulations, the importance of classified intelligence, but as much as he hates the thought of revealing himself to the army brass, he knows that he has to because she’s been missing for a month, and if search parties start to seem like wasted resources, they’ll pull the plug faster than anything, so he has to. Captain America has never been good for much, but if the legacy gives Steve the leverage he needs to keep things going, he’ll take it.

(Steve meets one of Antonia—Toni’s—friends not long after he joins the search, and James Rhodes is an incredible ally, really the best he ever could have hoped for, and he’s so glad to know she has people in her corner because the way most people talk about her is incredibly callous and he doesn’t understand)

He isn’t there the day they find her, but he hears all about it later, about the explosion in the mountains that led them to her, and he has to laugh because it’s so like Howard, but more than that, it’s so like Peggy, and for the first time since waking up he’s actually happy about something.

_(—he watches her press conference on the news and it takes him almost two weeks to get clearance to fly to California, but he has to meet her, he has to, this beautiful, hard-edged woman who isn’t comfortable being a part of “a system with zero accountability,” who isn’t afraid to risk destroying her livelihood and her father’s legacy in one fell swoop just because it’s the moral thing to do—)_

(Of course, Steve’s always been bad with women when it matters, so their first meeting is initially less than perfect. He realizes his misstep when she goes rigid at the mention of Howard and it reminds him of Jerry Davis who lived down the street from Bucky and always used to flinch when asked about his family and he thinks, _oh, Howard, no_ )

She slams a door in his face, but thankfully gives him a second chance, and Steve thinks he’s redeemed himself by the time he leaves her house that day. If Steve had wanted to know Toni Stark before their first meeting, it’s nothing compared to how he feels after, but he gives her space because there’s a look in her eyes that reminds him of Bucky right after his rescue and he doesn’t want to push.

_(—still, he’s furious when she’s shut out of her own company and then awed when he sees the first images of the “Iron Man” armor, because it’s the most incredible thing and god, she’s so brilliant—)_

Steve goes back to California after her fight with Obadiah Stane and stands in the back at the SHIELD-organize press conference. He watches as she pauses and stares at the index cards with her prepared statement and when she looks back up, the determination on her face is all Peggy and he’s laughing almost before she’s finished speaking because of course, of course.

(He sticks around after that because she asks him to and he’s not sure he has it in him to deny her anything because she’s brash and loud and utterly captivating and, despite her connection to his past, she’s the first person he’s met in this strange future who just treats him like a person instead of an icon or a soldier or a man-out-of-time and he needs that)

_(—the feelings develop quietly, unobtrusively, and he doesn’t recognize them for what they are until he’s watching her fly a nuke into an alien dimension, until he has to make the call that might be the end of her, until the arc reactor flickers back to life and her eyes open and he thinks, thank god, thank god, because he’s not too late—)_

Steve learns a lot about Toni Stark in the months following their initial meeting. She talks a lot about Peggy—which is both wonderful and painful at the same time—and her family’s butler, Edwin Jarvis, and he reads between the lines and avoids mentioning Howard as much as possible. They meet for lunch every week when he’s in California and often talk on the phone when he isn’t, and the people at SHIELD think it’s strange that they’re friends, but he doesn’t particularly care what they think.

(He does care later, because that’s the point at which SHIELD begins interfering in Toni’s life without her knowledge. When that happens, it no longer matters that she’s been avoiding him, that something is obviously wrong and she won’t tell him, because sending Natasha to spy on a friend of his is crossing a line, so he chews out Nick Fury for an hour and then goes to Toni’s house to give Natasha a similar piece of his mind, although he’s lighter on her because she wasn’t the one who came up with the mission)

The first time Steve goes to Pepper for advice is around the time Toni starts avoiding his calls. It’s not much use—Pepper just shakes her head and tells him that if he can figure out what’s going on with Toni, more power to him—but he gains another ally in the constant fight that is protecting Toni Stark even from herself, so it’s not a wasted meeting.

_(—Pepper gets a look in her eyes when she talks about Toni that’s a mix of fondness, frustration, and something else, and it doesn’t click for Steve until he finds Pepper in Toni’s kitchen one morning a few weeks after the Expo looking rumpled and satisfied, and he’s happy for them, but there’s a sinking in his stomach that he can’t place—)_

The second time Steve goes to Pepper for advice is right after Toni comes back from Monaco and Natasha fills him in on everything that wasn’t on the news. The second time is slightly more helpful than the first even though Pepper is near the end of her rope. She tells him to stay so he does, and then when Toni finally breaks down, he’s there to hold her together at least a little bit.

(He understands why she didn’t tell him, but he’s also horrified because she’s dying and thought she shouldn’t tell him because it would make things easier and she’s so infuriating sometimes that he wants to shake her, but he goes to SHIELD instead because that’s something that might actually help the situation)

In the end, she saves her own life, because of course she does, and Steve tells Fury that if he wants Captain America anywhere near the Avengers Initiative, he’s going to have to accept Toni Stark as well.

_(—he never regrets it, not even when they’re fighting on the helicarrier, when he’s so furious with her he can barely speak because she’s reckless as hell and it drives him mad even though logically he knows she’s perfectly capable—)_

After the Battle of New York, Steve gets out of the city for six weeks or so. He has a variety of reasons, but if he’s honest with himself, one of the biggest is his newly discovered feelings for Toni, because she’s still alive but she’s also still in a relationship with Pepper and he wouldn’t dream of trying to get in the way of that but he needs time and space to process.

_(—it’s really difficult though, because he comes back and she’s built him a place to live almost from the ground up and it’s perfect and saying ‘thank you’ doesn’t feel like anywhere close to enough to express how much it means, and she’s given him a home—)_

(She runs away to Malibu—

_—and yes, he feels comfortable calling it running because he knows by now how she acts when she’s trying to avoid him and that’s what she’s doing even though he doesn’t know why—_

—and it’s almost okay with him because he’s even more confused than he was before he left in the first place, but also not because if he can’t be with her he wants to at least be around her)

When Toni comes back to New York, they somehow see less of each other than they did before they lived in the same building, but Steve contents himself with the moments he can steal—

_—usually murmured confessions in the middle of nights when neither one of them can take dealing with their demons alone anymore—_

—and keeps his feelings to himself.

_(—the moments that aren’t in the middle of the night are more difficult to deal with, because they fight constantly for no real reason and he can’t seem to stop himself from getting sucked in even when he knows fighting with her serves no purpose whatsoever—)_

A few months later, Pepper finally comes to see him, and it’s a surprise, even though Steve thinks he should have expected it at some point.

_He braces himself for the worst when she sits down next to him, feeling like he should apologize even though he’s technically done nothing that needs apologizing for._

_“So, how long have you been in love with my girlfriend? Because, by my estimate, it’s been a pretty long time,” Pepper says, and Steve stiffens, his mind searching for explanations or assurances until he glances up and catches the amused twinkle in her eyes._

_“Does she know?” He asks instead, because he thinks her question was more rhetorical than anything._

_Pepper shakes her head. “The day Toni accepts that someone else cares about her without being explicitly informed by that person will be the day hell freezes over. Unfortunate as it is.”_

_“Then why…” He gestures helplessly, because she has to know he’s not planning on interfering in their relationship, so he’s not entirely sure why they’re having this conversation to begin with._

_“Because you do love her, just like I love her. And I don’t think those two things have to be mutually exclusive.” She leaves him with that and he’s almost more confused than he was before, but at least he feels less guilty._

_(It makes a lot more sense a few weeks later, when Toni is pulling at his shirt and asking him to stay with her, and well, he’s never been able to deny her anything really, so he does)_

Things become so much easier after that, at least in some ways. Steve feels lighter, freer, because being with Toni is just as incredible as he thought it would be and he doesn’t have to hold back anymore.

(She doesn’t let him tell her he loves her for months, but he has fun finding ways to show her, and that’s a compromise he can live with)

The world comes close to falling apart sometimes, but they make do, the three of them together—

_(—and it is the three of them even if he and Pepper are only ever platonic—)_

—they make it work because not being together isn’t an option any of them are willing to consider, no matter how difficult things can be.

(When Fury calls Steve to D.C, he almost says no, but in the end he agrees, mostly because he doesn’t fully trust SHIELD anymore and is afraid of what might happen if he’s not there. Toni gets very quiet when he tells her he’s going and disappears into her workshop for a day, but when she comes out, she’s made him a new uniform and he thinks that means she accepts it even if she doesn’t approve)

Months later, when Steve’s world really does fall apart, the thought of his life back in New York is one of the few things that forces him to keep going, at least until the very end when it comes down to his life or Bucky’s, his life or the lives of millions, and he tells Maria to just do it. When he wakes up in the hospital after it’s all over, Sam is there, and so is Toni.

_(—he lets her yell because he knows he scared her, knows how close she came to losing him, and that’s just how she reacts when she’s scared, so he lets her and when she’s finished, she climbs into the hospital bed with him and presses her face to his neck and he holds her as best as he can because he’s so glad he still has the chance—)_

The world falls apart, but they don’t.

_Steve goes into the ice with Peggy’s voice in his ear and Bucky’s face flickering behind his eyelids and he doesn’t want to die._

_He wakes up and he does._

_He never expects to find something new to live for._

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Delilah" by Florence + The Machine. 
> 
> (One day I will stop getting my titles from Florence songs. Today is not that day)


End file.
